, monsieur. He upsets you, dead though he may be."

"I don't say not, I don't say not, M. Beautrelet, I confess that I feel
a certain excitement now that I am about to set eyes on him--unless,
indeed, his friends have taken away the body."

"And always admitting," observed the Comte de Gesvres, "that it was
really he who was wounded by my poor niece."

"It was he, beyond a doubt, Monsieur le Comte," declared Beautrelet;
"it was he, believe me, who fell in the ruins under the shot fired by
Mlle. de Saint-Veran; it was he whom she saw rise and who fell again
and dragged himself toward the cloisters to rise again for the last
time--this by a miracle which I will explain to you presently--to rise
again for the last time and reach this stone shelter--which was to be
his tomb."

And Beautrelet struck the threshold of the chapel with his stick.

"Eh? What?" cried M. Filleul, taken aback. "His tomb?--Do you think
that that impenetrable hiding-place--"

"It was here--there," he repeated.

"But we searched it."

"Badly."

"There is no hiding-place here," protested M. de Gesvres. "I know the
chapel."

"Yes, there is, Monsieur le Comte. Go to the mayor's office at
Varengeville, where they have collected all the papers that used to be
in the old parish of Ambrumesy, and you will learn from those papers,
which belong to the eighteenth century, that there is a crypt below the
chapel. This crypt doubtless dates back to the Roman chapel, upon the
site of which the present one was built."

"But how can Lupin have known this detail?" asked M. Filleul.

"In a very simple manner: because of the works which he had to execute
to take away the chapel."

"Come, come, M. Beautrelet, you're exaggerating. He has not taken away
the whole chapel. Look, not one of the stones of this top course has
been touched."

"Obviously, he cast and took away only what had a financial value: the
wrought stones, the sculptures, the statuettes, the whole treasure of
little columns and carved arches. He did not trouble about the
groundwork of the building itself. The foundations remain."

"Therefore, M. Beautrelet, Lupin was not able to make his way into the
crypt."

At that moment, M. de Gesvres, who had been to call a servant, returned
with the key of the chapel. He opened the door. The three men entered.
After a short examination Beautrelet said:

"The flag-stones on the ground have been respected, as one might
expect. But it is easy to per